Memphis filmmaker Kentucker Audley (of the IndieMemphis-winning debut Team Picture) and Jump Back Jake frontman Jake Rabinbach are collaborating on a feature film — Open Five — scheduled to begin shooting in early August. The film, which Audley (pictured) will direct and which the duo co-wrote and will act in, is rooted in Rabinbach’s experiences as a New Yorker living in Memphis.
To help raise an $8,000 portion of what’s expected to be a roughly $15,000 budget, the duo is soliciting online donations, with various perks offered depending on the amount of the donation. You can donate or just learn more about the project here.
“It’s a fictional film, but we both drew on our own lives,” says Rabinbach, who has been alternating his time between Memphis and New York while playing guitar in the New York band Francis & the Lights. “I’m interested in how people who have lived in New York function in Memphis, because it’s a really different culture.”
The film, about a weekend double-date between two local artists and two visiting New York women, “aims to be a new defining portrait of Memphis … particularly focusing on the living tradition of modern Memphis musicians and filmmakers,” according to Audley’s director’s statement. Joe Swanberg is coming in to be the film’s director of photography.
